Prince Hamlet
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Prince Hamlet is the main character in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet.
Like the play itself, Hamlet the character is possibly the most discussed and contentious character in drama and indeed in Western literature. While conceding he is one of Shakespeare's greatest creations, critics are at odds over the inner motivations and psyche of this character. His relationships with the various characters of the story, including his father, his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude and his beloved Ophelia, have all been subjected to multiple speculations, including modern psychological theories. Critics as varied as Goethe, Coleridge, Hegel, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Freud, T. S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Harold Bloom, and Asimov have written essays on him, each with an alternately fascinating insight. J. Dover Wilson produced one of the most influential[1] readings of the first half of the 20th century[2]; Harold Bloom was dominant in the second half. Besides being Shakespeare's most demanding role (with some 1,495 lines), Hamlet is also the most introspective. Actors have traditionally struggled with this role, and it can be safely said that any one performance can capture only some of the many facets of the creation. This, however, has made the role of Hamlet one of the most desired roles in theatre.
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[edit] Views of Hamlet
Perhaps the most straightforward view sees Hamlet as seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. The most standard view is that Hamlet is highly indecisive, which is the view as proposed by Coleridge and a number of other critics. "Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth, that action is the chief end to existence". The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind."
Others see Hamlet as a person charged with a duty that he both knows and feels is right, yet is unwilling to carry out. In this view, all of his efforts to satisfy himself of King Claudius' guilt, or his failure to act when he can, are evidence of this unwillingness, and Hamlet berates himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene, he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this passion for an ancient Greek character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation:
- "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
- Is it not monstrous that this player here,
- But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
- Could force his soul so to his own conceit
- That from her working all his visage wan'd;
- Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
- A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
- With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
- For Hecuba?
- What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
- That he should weep for her?" […]
[edit] Etymology of Hamlet
Hamlet’s name is one filled with meaning and controversy. The name Hamlet occurs as early as the tenth century. His name is easily derived in form from Belleforest and the lost play from Amlethus of Saxo, and remaining in this form is then derived from its Latin form of the old Jutish Amlethoe. From this point the name can be divided into sections with common meanings. In terms of etymology the root name of Hamlet is an Icelandic noun, Amlooi, meaning ‘fool.’ However this name is derived from the way that Hamlet acts in the play and is not in all actuality the true Etymology of the name since the meaning is found through the actions of Hamlet. The second way of translating the name is by analyzing the noun aml-ooi into ‘raving mad’ and the second half, amla into ‘routine’. Later these names were incorporated into Irish dialect as Amlodhe. As phonetic laws took their course the name’s spelling changed eventually leaving it as Amlaidhe. This Irish name was given to a hero in a common folk story. The route of this name is ‘furious, raging, wild.’ These are all meanings in which Shakespeare would have been aware of when deciding on the name for his longest play.
- Kemp Malone The Review of English Studies, Vol. 3, No. 11 (Jul.,1927),pp.257-271
http://www.jstor.org/view/00346551/ap020014/02a00000/0
[edit] Asimov
Another view of Hamlet, advanced by Isaac Asimov in his Guide to Shakespeare, holds that his actions are attributable not to indecision, but to multiple motivations: his desire to avenge the wrong done to his father, coupled with his own ambition to succeed to the throne. The tragic error committed by Hamlet, in Asimov's view, is his overreaching wish to see Claudius damned, and not merely dead, which prevents him from killing Claudius at the opportune moment.
[edit] Influence of the Reformation
It has also been suggested that Hamlet's hesitations may also be rooted in the religious beliefs of Shakespeare's time. The Reformation had generated debate about the existence of purgatory (where King Hamlet claims he currently resides). The concept of purgatory is a Catholic one, and was frowned on in Protestant England. It is possible that Hamlet's own logic ought to be taken seriously. Hamlet says that he will not kill his uncle because death would send him straight to heaven, while his father (having died without foreknowledge of his death) is in purgatory doing penance for his. Hamlet's opportunity to kill his uncle comes just after the uncle has supposedly made his peace with God. Hamlet says that he would much rather take a stab at the murderer while he is frolicking in the incestuous sheets, or gambling and drinking, so he could be sure of his going straight to Hell.
[edit] Freudian interpretation
Ernest Jones, following the work of Freud, held that Hamlet suffered from the 'Oedipus complex'. He said in his essay "The Oedipus-Complex as An Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive":
- His moral fate is bound up with his uncle's for good or ill. The call of duty to slay his uncle cannot be obeyed because it links itself with the call of his nature to slay his mother's husband, whether this is the first or the second; the latter call is strongly "repressed," and therefore necessarily the former also.
[edit] As a mirror of the audience
It has also been suggested that Hamlet, who is described by Ophelia as "th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mould of form" (Act III, Scene i, lines 148-9), is ultimately a reflection of all of the interpretations possessed by other characters in the play—and perhaps also by the members of an audience watching him. Polonius, most obviously, has a habit of misreading his own expectations into Hamlet’s actions ("Still harping on my daughter!"), though many other characters in the play participate in analogous behavior.
Gertrude has a similar tendency to interpret all of her son’s activities as the result of her "o’erhasty marriage" alone. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tend to find the stalled ambitions of a courtier in their former schoolmate’s behavior, whereas Claudius seems to be concerned with Hamlet’s motivation only so far as it reveals the degree to which his nephew is a potential threat. Ophelia, like her father, waits in vain for Hamlet to give her signs of affection, and Horatio would have little reason to think that Hamlet was concerned with anything more pressing than the commandment of the ghost. And the First Gravedigger seems to think that Prince Hamlet, like that "whoreson mad fellow” Yorick, is simply insane without any need for explanation. Several critics, including Stephen Booth and William Empson have further investigated the analogous relationship between Hamlet, the play, and its audience.
Nevertheless, over the last four centuries Prince Hamlet has become an icon in the entire western consciousness: the definition of what it means to be intelligent, and perhaps, fully human.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Hamlet. Harold Jenkins, ed. Methuen, 1982. (The Arden Shakespeare)
- Wilson, J. Dover, What Happens in Hamlet. Cambridge University Press; 3rd edition, 1951. (First published in 1935)
